


A Whirling Flail Smile

by LorienofLoth



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Careers Have Issues, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 05:59:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10938438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LorienofLoth/pseuds/LorienofLoth
Summary: Would a mentor ever wish their tribute didn’t walk out alive?





	A Whirling Flail Smile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lorata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/gifts).
  * Inspired by [don't ever wanna let you down](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6302614) by [lorata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/pseuds/lorata). 



> Drunk posting this. Also, anyone who hasn't read lorata's stuff, read it. Also, I have finished my fucking exams thank God.

Aria flicks through the file on her lap, ignoring the pain in her feet and the girl eating grapes opposite her. She’s used to pain in her feet; was never, despite copious image training and hours of practice, really able to acclimatise to walking in the heels that are expected of her as a Victor of District One. Clarissa, her own mentor, had advised seeing the shoes as armour, but they just make Aria feel unbalanced and vulnerable. And they hurt her feet.

It’s funny. In her own Games, she’d lost her shoes in a river and walked barefoot over stones and mud for miles. In the end the boy from Two had followed a trail of her blood to the final showdown. And yet high heels hurt her feet.

Britta is comfortable in heels. Britta can giggle and flirt and dance in them without seeming off-balance, but then she’s not the sort of girl to unbalance easily. Aria knows why the Academy chose Britta—it’s in the file she’s flicking through, notes on dedication and image training and skill in close combat and probably walking in fucking high heels—and she also knows it’s not why she chose her. Aria chose to mentor again when she saw Britta’s true smile, fleeting but there, when she whirled a flail. 

Unfortunately, she hasn’t seen it since.

‘The knives were well done,’ she says, more for a reaction than for anything else.

Britta grins, bright and false, tossing a grape into the air and catching it. ‘I like knives.’

‘You can make things very bloody with knives, if you do it properly. And you will need to be bloody; the audience wants flashy this Games. Try to pick up a couple of slow painful kills at the Cornucopia. Let the audience know that you’re going to provide mayhem, not just death.’

Britta’s smile spreads across her face like blood across a rock after a tribute’s head has been smashed against it, slow and unsteady, but there, and it’s only over a decade of mentoring that keeps Aria’s face still in response. 

‘I can definitely do that.’

‘It should amp up the drama they expect from you, too, urge a strong final showdown if you’re the audience favourite.’

And it’s there again, barely even a blink, almost hidden by the accompanying coquettish smile and the toss of golden ringlets, all done up in bunches like a little girl, a fashion that will be all the rage if Britta wins. A glance at Aria’s thigh where her dress, sheer white silk, has risen up enough to show yellowing bruises. Four of them. Shaped like fingers. Britta tries to pull her manic smile out of the flirtatious one and she’s good, there isn’t a fool in the Capitol who would be able to tell the difference, but Aria had watched her pack from beneath lowered lashes, had known the girl from Two was going to goad the boy from Four into breaking the pack before she’d even smiled at him, and Britta might as well have stood on Flickerman’s stage and screamed.

It’s been years since Aria thought about the year after the Quell, when her mentor had drifted further and further into a morphling-drenched haze until one day she’d gone to bed, needle in her wrist, and never woken up, but something about Britta’s smile brings it back.

‘Forget about the final showdown then. Just concentrate on making it bloody and messy and keep an eye on the boy from Two. He’s the one to watch, and Twos are always ruthless, even when they’re not playing stoic son of the mountains or absolutely fucking insane. He’s going to try and kill his way through as much of the pack as he can, so either kill him straight away, or keep him onside. You might decide you need him later.’ 

Aria knows what she would have done, but then she wanted to live. She’ll tell Britta everything she’s noticed about the other tributes, who is unsure and who is arrogant and how Sheen has a weak spot in his knee from a training incident a few years back and even though he has ten years before it’ll give him any trouble, if he gets that far, he’s overcautious of it, and she’ll get Britta sponsors—not that that will be hard—and stay awake for twenty hours at a time, gritty-eyed from lack of sleep and shaking from too many stim tabs, to keep an eye on the monitors and do everything she can to keep the girl alive because of how alive she looks when she whirls a flail. She’ll do everything she can to get Britta out alive, except keep quiet about how best to end up dead.

 

Aria is nine days and thirty-one hours of sleep into the Games when Britta slips off with the boy from Two while the rest of the tributes sleep, kissing him and moulding her body against his. It’s hardly anything new until she breathes a plea loud enough for the camera to catch and then Aria knows. A quick glance around mentor central shows the others are still pre-occupied, headsets on and haggling for supplies or drowsing over a cup of coffee, but it’s still too early to take her headset off. No-one else seems to realise that Britta is a dead girl kissing, or they don’t care and Aria clenches the fist that isn’t hovering over her keyboard hard enough to draw blood without taking her eyes off the screen. It’s a shitty death Britta’s chosen, but it’s no worse than any other in the arena and it’s a damn sight better than the one she would have got had she won. And it’s the death she’s chosen, so Aria is going to watch as she rubs herself against him and as they kiss and as she smiles her real smile, the flail-smile, as he slides a dagger between her ribs. 

 

 

 


End file.
